Harvey Fierstein On Russia: Gays ‘Will Not Be The Scapegoat Of The World Any Longer’ (Video)

Last night, MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes invited the iconic Harvey Fierstein and Dan Savage to talk about Russiaand their anti-gay laws on his show, “All In.” Both men have been at the forefront of making the general public in America aware of the atrocities of Vladimir Putin‘s war on gays.

Fierstein had taken issue with Hayes’ previous coverage, and written this scathing rebuke via Facebook on Tuesday:

I watched the Chris Hayes show last night with open mouth. One would swear the entire Russian controversy was about the stupid Olympics. I wondered if there is any way to reach a white male Christian heterosexual and let them know what it’s like to live in fear of your safety. I wonder if he’d be so off-topic if our elected officials threatened to pass a law that would remove his baby from his home. Might that wake these folks up? Because that’s what’s happening to us, Mr Hayes.

“The gay community has in our history been attacked in every way you can attack a group,” Fierstein said. “There’s nothing that the human race has thought of to tear down other people that hasn’t been used on us. Thankfully we have over the centuries, over the decades and over the last few years made some great strides where people realize we’re just human beings, we are your family, we’re not a strange group from somewhere else. We belong in your family, we’re teachers, parents, children. Those strides have been made. My feeling is, at this point it is time to stop being scapegoats for the rest of the world. Putin is not doing these laws because he believes this. I don’t know what his real agenda is, but I have to assume it has something to do with money. With Putin, it always does. I assume he’s trying to get his right wing people behind him, and everyone loves to hate a homo. He gets the church behind him, he has his wing behind him. And he can go out and do whatever it is he’s doing and no one’s looking that way.”

“I will fight that injustice here on American soil. I will fight it in russia, I will fight it in Uganda. It’s time for us to put our foot down and say we will not be the scapegoat of the world any longer.”

“Putin says he’s doing this to protect children. Now everyone knows that 25 to 40% of all gay youth attempt suicide. The statistics go up when a law is passed against someone. There’s something official done. You want to protect children, you’re killing children. And then in the united states, I’m not sure about the figures in other countries, 40% of the homeless children are gay and lesbian, either because they’ve been thrown out by their own parents or they have so much self-loathing they feel their parents will never love them and they leave home. If you love your children, have you to be in there.”

Fierstein also talked about all of Putin’s anti-gay laws, including one that reportedly is ready to be passed: removing children from homes of same-sex couples.

“You cannot just ignore evil. When evil shows its face you have to answer. When you don’t answer, look what happened, you were talking about Hitler, so we went to the Olympics in Germany, right? Yes, they took down the anti-Jewish posters for two weeks, what happened? Owens won a gold medal and then 6 million Jews were killed. What if the world had turned their back on Hitler, what if the world had left Germany empty for those Olympics?”

I thought Mr. Fierstein was completely off base in his attack on Julia Ioffe, the woman who is denigrated during the course of his interview. Mr. Fierstein can be righteous about what he feels is important in the fight against the Putin government; but he should not denigrate a journalist who has lived and worked in Russia; who speaks fluent Russian and who understands the Russian psyche. Chris Hays did defend her comments in which she has explained how the Russians see the West. She is an interpreter, as any journalist maybe. Poor form Harvey. Poor form.